top of mindNo Parking, No ProblemTransit-oriented developments are reflecting the preferences of today’syounger professionals. Learn what leading-edge developers are thinking.

Millennials are driving today’s transformation of major urban centers, according to a fall 2014 Cushman & Wakefield
report. Many are opting to ditch cars
as long as they can live within walking
distance of amenity-rich areas and easily
catch transit when they’re looking to venture beyond their neighborhood hub. In
just six years, C&W reports, they’ll make
up more than half of the global workforce.

This expanding cohort of workers born
since 1982 is likely to turbocharge another phenomenon with important ramifications for commercial practitioners:
the demand for so-called transit-oriented
development.

These mixed-use areas in cities and
suburbs are located a half-mile or less
from public transportation and typically
occur in higher-density communities.

Along with improving access to jobs,such developments spur other benefits,However, like the millennials them-selves, TODs have matured since theyfirst emerged. In some cases, neigh-borhood activists are pushing for TODs.

And where they’re not on consumers’radar, developers are fine-tuning theirstrategies to seek meaningful commu-nity involvement. Smart developersunderstand they need to offer more thanjust proximity to transit. Their projectsneed to reflect the changing lifestyles ofyounger consumers who are more likelyto be tethered to their electronic gadgetsthan to a vehicle—a reality that lendersare starting to grasp as well.

Since the late 1990s, TOD has been
a force in the development world, says
David Dixon, an urban planner at Stantec
in Boston. The Great Recession, however,
changed TOD’s trajectory.

“Transit’s ability to really incentdevelopment—and a different kind ofdevelopment, of walkable communities—first became recognized in the late 1990sand early 2000s,” he explains. “Butcoming out of the recession there’s beenso much more awareness of the powerof cities to attract people, the interest inwalkable environments, and the desire tonot have a car. ”Data has begun emerging showingthat TOD improves property values. A

2009 study by CEOs for Cities found
that in 13 of the 15 markets analyzed,
increased walkability in a neighborhood
was directly linked to higher home values.